It's Dancin' Dan!

A bad joke

2007-11-12T23:40:59Z

It's even more niche than the abelian grape joke! [1]

Q: How do you get a room full of partial evalutation experts to watch a Matt Groening animation?
A: Tell them it's the first Futurama projection

Yep, I've been reading this and I'm a sad geek ;-)

[1] What's purple and commutes?

Meme

2006-12-27T19:20:01Z

I never really do the meme posting thing, but this one made me laugh...

In other news, I've now got a myspace account. Yay bandwagons!

Dr. Dan...

2006-03-01T17:07:52Z

...that's me! I passed my viva with minor corrections on Monday afternoon.

Oxford boy makes it big

2006-02-23T17:42:30Z

I've just found out that an acquaintance from Oxford (we shared some lectures and some friends), who for a while has been a high-profile employee of the Mozilla Foundation, also writes for the Times. Well done Gervase!

Maniac anthologists

2006-02-16T10:13:59Z

According to today's dose of spam, maniac anthologists have been out and about RA'PING a BLONDE. I've never liked anthologists, myself.

Grrr. Spamassassin taking too much memory and making my VPS swap manically so exim times out and lets through spam. Unixshell are usually lovely people but they are dragging their feet on my much-needed memory upgrade :-(

Everything is out there somewhere

2006-02-09T10:12:32Z

The Internet is amazing sometimes. I was looking for Marvin Minsky's often-quoted paper "Why Programming Is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly-Understood and Sloppily-Formulated Ideas". This bit is particularly commonly quoted:

A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren't flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

So, google for the title of the paper. Aha! Lots of hits. It turns out that there was a talk of the same name a OOPSLA last year. Filter out those results and there is very little left except the famous quotes. Try Minsky's home page? Not even listed in his publications. I was beginning to think I'd have to track down the 1967 edition of Design and Communication II (where it was originally published) which even bl.uk doesn't seem to have.

So I thought I'd give googling one last chance, and I found this link with a PDF. Not a PDF of a picture of the paper, but a new PDF of a revised version! Where does it come from? Who knows! This seems to be the only place on the Internet where it is still available.

So I'm giving it some google juice in the hope that it'll help the next person looking for this paper.

Gaggia, odd

2006-01-30T10:48:54Z

Do you remember when all the things you wanted were £10? For some reason, everything I want now seems to cost £200. The nice thing about having a job is that I can occasionally buy these things.

I bought a Gaggia Red Evolution espresso machine, and very grand it is too. Like most things, it has an optional extended warranty, which tops out at £69 for three extra years. Not bad. However, if you register online as I did, you don't get offered the for-pay extended warranty. No, instead you can get it for free by buying enough stuff (coffee, tea, etc.) from the Gaggia online shop. Quite a lot of stuff (and it's not fair trade, so I don't really want to buy it). So can I still get the for-pay extended warranty? Who knows!

Then there's the card they gave me in the shop which said "register online and get £50 of Gaggia vouchers" which haven't materialised. I need to find that card and chase that one, I think. That in itself is almost the value of an extended warranty...

The chick is online

2005-12-07T12:08:53Z

Lots of things have changed since my last proper post (which was over a year ago!) and I'll be blogging about them bit by bit. One of the more interesting, for those who know both me and the chick, is that she is now on LJ too, reviewing exhibitions and theatre stuff around London. Check out ms_vasari.

Thesis

2005-12-01T19:26:50Z

Today I printed my PhD thesis. Only a year late.

At last I can start wasting my time on Livejournal again. Yay!

Flat!

2004-07-28T21:08:38Z

The Chick and I just put a deposit on a flat! It's near to Highbury & Islington tube station and it's got laminate floors in a huge living room with open plan kitchen and it's even got access to gardens. The best bit is that the agency is called Hotblack Desiato, and is the origin of the character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

And I'm posting this sat in The Brittania the (surprisingly nice) pub in Euston station, waiting for the Sleeper up to Edinburgh as we missed the last train :-(. Bluetooth is a wonderful thing.

If anybody's interested my travelogue thing of New York is finished -- you'll have to go back to the main page of my blog to see it all.

New York -- looking back

2004-07-23T22:04:20Z

Looking back at my notes on New York, I think I must have been in a very grumpy mood. Certainly now, I miss the city a lot and I think I enjoyed myself more than I admitted to. The grumpyness probably had a lot to do with my upcoming presentation at the BMC workshop the following Sunday (which went unexpectedly well, by the way), although it probably had a little to do with the general attitude of the New Yorkers that I encountered: with the exception of the dancers, everyone I met was surly, difficult, and uncooperative. From people in the street to the information desk at Newark everyone just seemed to be unpleasant. Come on, people. You live in the most vibrant, exciting city in the world! Have some humanity, please!

New York: Day 3

2004-07-23T22:02:38Z

My last day in New York, but I manage to enjoy myself at last!

My last day in New York, I was determined to make the most of it. I got up bright and early so that I could spend some quality time at MoMA from the moment it openned and still make a few dance classes in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, which MoMA's main building is being renovated, the collection is being shown in little bits at MoMA QNS (Queens). Which means I didn't get to see the things I was really looking forward to: the Marcel Duchamp readymades and the Degas paintings and sculptures. They did have a couple of early Jackson Pollacks and a couple of late Mondrians which were interesting, but I did come away feeling like I'd made a long trip for little reward.

Back downtown I planned to go to Steps and then the Guggenheim to make up for my disappointment earlier. At Steps I went to an "AdvBeg" class to try to guage the meaning of the levels: as a class it was pretty much a waste of time for me, although Robin Tribble seemed to be a good teacher. The worst thing was that it drained my limited energy leaving me already sweating and tired when I started the next class: a rhythm class with Lynn Schwab. This was an excellent class that I'd recommend to anyone. We spent pretty much the whole class facing away from the mirror focussing on the precision and timing of the steps she was teaching us. She was trying to pursuade us to dance the steps rather than just going through the motions. One interesting demonstration involved two dancers facing each other (she did this first with a regular, and then with me) doing the same steps. First, they just do the steps; then they catch each others eyes and dance to each other. The difference in sound is dramatic, just from this change in attitude.

Exhasted but happy, I went down to the Broadway Dance Centre as I still hadn't picked up my BDC card. I didnt' think I'd really do another class but I decided it would be worth a look just in case. Asking the advice of the staff there, I was recommended Mike Minery's class although it was the harder of the classes that evening, as he is apparently not often in town. Having an hour free to put some life back into my aching feet and some spring back into my flagging step I went to a bagel shop for a quick bite to eat, a cup of coffee, and a bottle of stimulating vitamin drink stuff. I sat on a high chair and massaged my feet. By the time the class came round I was much more on the ball: I think it was the most focussed I had been for any of the classes in New York!

...Which was just as well. Mike Minery may only be 22 but he has a unique style and an intense rhythmic energy that demands full attention from the dancer -- and from the audience too. We covered some steps that I've certainly never seen before, and several combinations that I know I'm going to be using for years to come. Another "must see" tapper.

I dined on nibbles from the convenience store and tried to get an early night ready for my flight to Boston the next morning, Mike's steps still buzzing around my head...

New York: Day 2

2004-07-23T21:52:52Z

A day wandering around New York and seeing some of the sights.

To go to a tap class or not? I'd probably be glad if I did, but right now I just can't face it. I'm going to take my taps with me just in case I change my mind, but I'm not exactly going to plan it into my day.

What I am planning to do is go to the Cloisters. Partly because it is mentioned in the book I'm reading (Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler) and partly because it just sounds amazing and ridiculous, pieces of mediaeval architecture shipped over from Europe and bolted together on a hill above New York.

(later)

It was a very hot day, and I went over to the Central Park around 74th Street where Steps is: Butterfly had a class in the afternoon and I wanted to be in the right place at the right time. I had a wander around looking for breakfast and ended up at a fantastic place on Amsterdam Avenue, opposite a Time Out recommended place with a huge queue. However, for $14 I ate a salmon benedict that was truly devine and large enough to keep me going for hours.

I retired to Central Park after dinner and had a look around trying to find the bicycle hire place: it's signposted at the 72nd street entrance and then never again! By the time Butterfly's class rolled around I was still so full from brunch that I couldn't face staggering through a dance class. Instead, I went up to the Cloisters. They are set in a beautiful park overlooking the City. I didn't go in: I objected to paying $12 to see imported mediaeval art, but I think I got some nice photos of the outside.

In the evening I inteded to do something really fun and New Yorky: My guide book described a night club called APT which has no sign outside -- you have to be "in the know". It's a good twenty blocks from my hotel so I made an evening of wandering down 7th avenue which quickly turned into the gay district with lovely looking restaurants, bars, shops, etc., not to mention pretty men, often hand-in-hand. I went a bit too far in the end: I ended up in a rather trendy Italian place in which they turned up their noses at my request for a "table for one". The waitress who ended up serving me seemd nice enough, though, and even brought me an extra candle to help my read by.

I did go and peer into APT, but by this time I was just too tired to brave clubbing on my own and I ended up returning to the hotel. I realise now that APT is in the "meat packing district" referred to in Kissing in Manhattan but not appearing on the maps I looked at. Perhaps it is, in fact, the club featured in the book?

New York: Day 1

2004-07-23T21:45:14Z

My first full day in New York, and the last day of the tap festival.

Four masterclasses in a day. That really is getting value for money out of being here, at the expense of common sense.

First up was Josh Hilberman, who reminds me of Patrick, my first tap teacher at Bodyworks, Cambridge. We did a routine to C bar blues which was amazing. Taught well too. We didn't realise until close to the end that the part of the routine we'd been working on first was actually in a break in the music which made it look really flashy. He choreographed the routine originally for Jazz Tap Ensemble (? is this right), originally in two groups -- but we did both groups' parts ourselves. Josh had a useful and unusual piece of advice for us budding hoofers picking up steps from others: "Lie, cheat, steal". He made us repeat it back to him.

After a quick break, some hardcore rhythm tap with Jason Samuel Smith, standing in for LaVaugh Robinson. No music, just beautiful tapping. He was improvising the routine as he taught it to us, so we got to see the creative process. His warm up was similar to Junior's (he cited someone else... whose name I now forget) and very intensive
-- I think that was the root cause of my agonies the following
morning.

Another thirty minute break for lunch (indigestion here we come!) and on to Lynn Dally -- the founder of the Jazz Tap Ensemble. I liked her style and her approach -- lighter and jazzier than the others -- but I was really beginning to flag and the steps just weren't sinking in. She rotated the class, sending the front line to the back every so often, which is a nice idea but made it hard to settle in a position where you can see the teacher adequately. Unfortunately she stopped rotating just when I reached the back, and after struggling for a bit longer I slipped out to go and nurse my aching feet and try to rest a bit before the final class.

Lady Di (Dianne Walker) has a teaching style which is totally new to me. She will show a step only once or twice (in fact, this was the way she did the warm up!) and rarely dances at the same time as the students. When you struggle, she speaks the rhythm in a way that immediately makes sense, but she doesn't seem to notice when people haven't got a clue what's going on. Unfortunately by this point in the day I was totally exhausted mentally as well as physically and I wasn't getting it. I slipped back a couple of rows so that I had someone in front of me to copy and was able to pick up the routine well enough to perform to the class with the rest of my row. Looking back, I think the routine was actually quite easy -- I would definately take a Lady Di class again, provided i was a bit more on the ball!

What do I take away from this? I think I prefer male tap dancers to female ones (which is lucky) both in terms of the style of teaching and the style of dancing. And I think that six hours of dance tuition in a day is a bit too much when still jet lagged. Next year I should plan to miss a session, but maybe make up for it by going to more other stuff.

In the evening I went to Time Square. Yuck. A seriously busy road junction has its place in every town, as does a touristy square with shops and restaurants. But to have them both in the same place? Madness. Imagine a cross between Leicester Square and the M25. As I still haven't found a nice cafe in Manhattan, I ate at Europan, who sell sandwiches and the like. I've eaten worse. After that, the Duke theatre for the last performance of the festival and the opportunity to see some of the most amazing dancing ever, and a fascinating monologue from one of the old time greats, Harold Cromer. Josh Hilberman did a dance originally by Paul Draper and the Rhythm Queens (Tony Waag: "of course, I used to be a rhythm queen") did a lovely song and dance thing with the target audience in mind (they made a rhyme with "K360s"). The grand finale was a communal shim sham led by the Hoofer Award winning Ernest "Brownie" Brown (is that right?) who half-hobbled, half-tapped but still managed to be hilarious.

I ate a hotdog on the way home. Strangely satisfying. And bought a nectarine from one of the myriad corner shops with more fruit and veg on show than most greengrocers in the UK -- and this was at midnight.

New York: Day 0

2004-07-15T17:04:59Z

My flight and first afternoon and evening in New York.

Flew to New York (duh). It felt slightly odd to be flying transatlantic in a little non-jumbo aeroplane. And it was all rather disorganised: the "computer was down" so assigning seats at check in took an age. At least they have helpers going down the line asking all the extra security questions -- which seemed rather pointless. What would have happened if I my laptop had been repaired recently? Once on the flight, I moved seats twice while the staff tried to seat all of the appropriate people together. In the end I ended up in an aisle seat (rather than middle) over the wing (rather than the back) sat with a rather nice elderly USAian couple. Food was... okay.

[Ooops, tense switch :-(] Upon arrival in at Newark, just before immigration a man is trying to catch my eye. "Do you live in Morningside?" he asks me. He is American. I tell him that I live nearby. "Were you at a bus stop in Morningside a couple of days ago?". Oh no, I think, he's seen me tap dancing at a bus stop, or doing something silly with Jo, or something. I say yes, and ask him if I saw me. "You were arguing with my wife. You better think twice about airing your opinions in public in future if you don't want to lose an eye". WTF? I tell him I didn't think that it was me he was thinking of. "Oh, I think it was" he says and walks off. I just stood there, dumbfounded. I had no idea how to react so I let him go.

Unfortunately that made me grumpy for the next few hours, which didn't help me to appreciate entering New York. Bought a bus ticket to Manhattan and with some barely remembered but beautifully pronounced French, helped a non-English speaking French woman buy hers and board the bus. Funny how these things surface in your mind when you need them. I was still grumpy until I saw a big advert for the new series of Coupling on BBC America which made me smile.

My hotel (the New Yorker) wasn't ready for me so I dropped off my luggage and went over to the Chelsea Studios where TapCity is taking place to sign in. Remember the first time you went into a big dance studio and saw a dozen people all as interested as you in dance? It was like that, squared. In the studio set aside for registration there was a little 6 year old doing some amazing steps and a little private lesson going on between two blokes in trainers. They also had a merchandising stall, so I bought a T-shirt and a towel with the TapCity logo on :-)

After checking in at the hotel, off I went again on a bit of an explore. Had a poke round CompUSA which I think is fun and tried once again to decide whether I want an iBook or a PowerBook. I walked all the way to 57th (23 blocks), and not in a very straight line. I learnt: not wearing socks with my new shoes was a mistake and caused blisters; shoes fitting "okay" is not good enough when walking a long long way. Oh well. On 57th was supposed to be the Broadway Dance Centre, which is not exactly a minor, little known, out of the way sort of place. But is it signposted? Is it heck. You find number 221 and discover that it is a massive Hard Rock Cafe. After hobbling around I was about to give up and get a taxi home when I saw a girl all alone wearing the T-shirt of said institution (the dance place, not the cafe chain) and ask her. Suddenly a gaggle of girls appeared from nowhere and swept me up and through a door which appears to go into the Hard Rock Cafe but in fact goes to a lift and the dance place. Phew. It's nice. There can't be many drop-in dance studios with a fresh juice bar.

I bought some plasters and patched up my bleeding and blistered feet and thought about going to Steps on Broadway, the other really major studio in New York. But it's on 74th and I didn't think that walking another 17 blocks on plasters would be a good idea. So I tried to navigate the NYC subway system which is not as easy as it sounds. Although there are plenty of detailed maps before you pass through the barriers, there are non afterwards. So you have to figure out whether you wanted to go to Brooklyn via Downtown on any of three different lines with subtle differences that I now forget. Anyway, I got there eventually. The door to this one was in amongst the rather extensive fruit and veg stands outside a supermarket. Slightly less nice an friendly, but a better line up of classes, so I guess I'll split my time between the two. Butterfly teaches there on Sunday, which is extremely exciting...

After Steps I went over to Central Park, which is close, but I was too tired to look at it properly. The area seems really nice, though. Much more chilled than downtown Manhattan, and the sort of place that you can really enjoy wandering around. Downtown feels like being in a scary Blair Witch version of Soho (in London): it's all a bit run down, with dodgy shops and dodgier fast food; you can see the theatre district in the distance, and you are aware that you are in a big modern city, but you can't quite find it.

New York and Boston

2004-07-15T16:53:31Z

I'm in Boston for CAV because I have a paper at the BMC workshop (my talk is on Sunday... wish me luck!). I stopped off in New York on the way for the Tap festival, and while I was there I kept a diary, which I'll be slowly editing and posting here over the next few days. If I can work out how to do it in ljupdate, I'll be backdating the entries to the days they correspond to.

Chippenham Folk Festival

2004-06-04T14:44:59Z

Went to Chippenham for a bit of a dance. First time in several years that I haven’t been dancing out with Diversity so it was a rather nice break and meant I could go to workshops (tried to learn a Sam Sherry clog thing and was the only person wearing taps instead of clogs...). Saw Whapweasel, bought a CD, and I’m now madly in love with the keyboard player. Yum. As always, I saw lots of friends that I only see at festivals -- nice to see them, but a shame that I don’t get to see them more often. This could be another good side-effect of moving to London.

Richard Stallman

2004-05-27T21:45:20Z

Yup, the man himself came to Edinburgh to give a talk -- two and a half hours without notes -- this afternoon. I made a few notes on things that I thought were interesting, and I thought I'd share them with you.

Overall message: it's all about people. Right-wing, non-free, copyright software serves to divide people and keep them helpless (as far as software is concerned); left-wing, free, copyleft software unites people by allowing them to work together.

RMS is anti-Coca Cola, anti-McDonalds, anti Bush, but drank Pepsi throughout the talk.

The free software movement exists to provide people with freedom (rather then software that costs nothing) -- in contrast to the open source movement, which expounds a development model.

There are four key freedoms for software:

0. Running the program. Fairly obvious... but consider DRM
1. Fixing the program. Requires access to the source. The alternative is paying to tell a vendor that there is a bug, then paying for the new version with all its new bugs...
2. Helping others. Someone sees your useful program, so you give them a copy. Not possible with commercial software, obviously. RMS likens this to the "help thy neighbour" promoted by religion, and the right-wing position hence as immoral (is it really like robbing a boat?)
3. Helping the community. Distribute bug-fixes and enhancements, driving the software forward. Importantly, supports those who cannot do the fixing for themselves.

Non-programmers benefit from freedom 3 as they can club together to pay for work to be done -- by any company they choose, meaning that they benefit from the free market.

How copyleft works: Assert copyright, which removes almost all rights for the recipient, then explicitly grant the rights that you want to give.

vi vi vi is the editor of the beast.

Vancouver

2004-05-25T13:27:35Z

A week in Canada for the SAT 2004 conference at which I had a poster. Lots of fun! I flew with Zoom which was surreal: budget airline values in a transatlantic jumbo. Highly recommended, though. Best part of Vancouver was obvious and I learnt a lot. Brilliant.

The conference was kinda frustrating: I talked to several people who I'd like to do more research with, but I haven't really got time now, and I shouldn't be doing anything new right now. Ken McMillan's talk was interesting, and brought up the issue of zChaff's heuristic effectively doing counterexample-based abstraction, finding a subset of a problem which it wants to focus on. There is still a bit of an open issue about why my encoding works well, so I had the idea of comparing the "abstraction" that zChaff does with and without my encoding -- my hypothesis is that it will be easier to refine my encoding. to a greater extent. But I don't have enough time left to work on it :-(

Moving to London

2004-05-25T12:56:13Z

So the chick got a place on the MA course at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Huzzah! Which means that in the autumn we are moving to London -- probably mid September.

I'm planning to work for the year as a monkey programmer or a sysadmin or something to support a 6-class-a-week habit at Pineapple -- any suggestions? I've been searching Jobsite but I'm not sure what I'm experienced enough to do. And of course we need somewhere to live. We're currently thinking of SE1, or maybe N1, but it's all a bit daunting at the moment.

It's been a while...

2004-05-25T11:37:23Z

I can't believe how long it's been since I last updated this here blog. (Thanks for the prod, ant_girl). I've got lots to say, so I'll do it in little bits. Just let me get some lunch...

Owww

2004-01-15T12:03:08Z

I hurt all over. I went to a different jazz dance class last night. It was billed as an “open” class, but was really hardcore -- most of the other people were girls who had been dancing since they were ikle. I’m used to a jazz class that’s mostly hip-hop, but this teacher used words like “glissé”. I felt more clumsy and fat than I normally do in a jazz class. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun, and from the amount of pain I’m in this morning, it’s going to be good for my flexibility ;-)

What a wonderful toy

2004-01-12T11:55:50Z

It’s not the existence of connections that amazes me, it’s their length.

Two people randomly picked from communities:

dancin_dan -> littlemsmortis -> jenova_red -> delerious -> tiffy2dope (4 hops)

dancin_dan -> boyofbadgers -> verlaine -> fuschia -> indymag -> umthatsmyass (5 hops)

I'm not a slut!

2004-01-08T15:23:33Z

LiveJournal Slut Score for dancin_dan
Percentage of your friends you’ve met	100.00%
Percentage of your friends you’ve kissed	8.33%
Percentage of your friends you’ve sexed	8.33%
Percentage of your friends you fancy	16.67%
Slut points	21
(Based on 12 LiveJournal friends)
Take the LJ Slut Test refined by darkmoon. [comment here]

Epiphany

2004-01-08T14:35:43Z

I wonder if the fact that Epiphany keeps crashing is some sort of comeupance for spending the whole day surfing blogs?